Buy Cheap Sony MEX-BT3800U In-Dash CD Receiver

Good value for Bluetooth happiness
In the before-time a tape adapter rattled noisily along with the music and podcasts from my HTC Fuze. The stock headunit in my Acura did not know the way of the Bluetooth. So, it had to go.

Installation wasn't difficult - requiring the right adapters and a bit of soldering. (The painful part was excavating the Acura's dash to gain access to the radio itself.) It is strongly recommended that you get a compatible microphone because the built-in one is unsatisfactory. My favorite features, so far, are:

1) Bluetooth audio from my smartphone. The bluetooth paired just like the manual said, and the sound is just fine through my stock speakers. Since I have a dash-mount for my phone, I don't care that it doesn't present my media library on the front panel.

2) Bluetooth phone calling. With the external mic, I have no problem being understood. It's so much safer and more convenient than holding a phone to my ear.

3) USB media library. I copied some favorite tunes to a spare thumbdrive and plugged it into the port. The interface is a bit simple - you can only increment albums or tracks. In my humble opinion, this makes the CD player (and tuner for that matter) entirely superfluous.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is only about half the cost of replacing a factory headunit. (Less, if you intend to replace speakers or add a subwoofer.) I found many of the other parts that I needed at a competitor's site (*cough* Crutchfield *cough*) including:
- Dash kit
- PAC SWI-PS steering wheel control kit
- External mic
- Wiring adapter

If you want more features, or better sound, there are other makes and models that serious audio buffs prefer. However, for my wallet, and desired features, this fit the bill just fine.

Nice
Works well. Easy install. ipod 3g syncs. I'm not sure about navigating through the ipod music with the stereo itself. It's touted as a great feature, but to me it seems to over complicate things, so I switched to what I think they call "passenger mode"...which means controlling it through the ipod itself. My ipod will sync with bluetooth, and that's fine if I forget the cord, but I keep it plugged into the usb to charge it.

I haven't tried the bluetooth with my phone since I use something else, so I can't comment on that.

One question to anyone else using an ipod... is there a way to make it so that it doesn't start playing automatically when the usb cord is plugged in? It always starts alphabetically from the songs list and so I hear the beginning of the same song every time I plug it in until I get settled. Just throwing that out there since I cant find any info anywhere.

overall it's a decent system.

Superb Unit
Combined the Sony unit with the following components to replace my factory receiver in my 06 Nissan Frontier Crew-Cab.

Metra 70-7550 Radio Wiring Harness For Nissan 95-Up Power 4 Speaker
Metra 99-7581 Niss Pathfinder/Frontier 05-Up Dashkit

Paired to my Android phone, I can stream my music to the unit and make hands-free calls. Pairing was super simple and the quality of the sound is great. Unit powers up and connects with my phone. Both Audio and Hand-free icons appear in addition to the bluetooth logo once connected.

Combined with the extra options for USB and Aux connections, this provides as much flexibility as I could need.

To install I removed the old unit, then soldered the wiring harness above to the harness that came with the unit. All wires color matched except with the exception of the amplifier and phone wires - neither of which I needed.

Great Radio
I installed this in my Sprinter Westfalia camper and it was quite a breeze, fit perfectly. The sound quality is good and the USB front jack is great for my ipod as well as my 4GB flash drive. There were no hiccups. If you're installing this in a sprinter make sure you buy a harness with adpater plug, makes life REALLY easy.

The adpater is: Metra 70-9401 Radio Wiring Harness for M B /L R /Sprinter 94-Up

Not Bad
The stereo works well. The sound quality is much better than my older sony head unit. The Bluetooth capability works well except for the microphone. My car is rather noisy and that is probably the main problem. People said that I seemed really far away and once I started driving they couldn't hear me very well. Everything else seems to work well. I will check into the external mic and see how that works.